12.05.2013

This holiday season ecoartspace is seeking to raise approximately $4,000 to support initial research for development of two ACTION GUIDES including Katie
Holten's Tree Museum and Tattfoo Tan's SOS projects. The donated art works are curated from our 2010 What Matters Most Benefit in NYC, which were created in response to Andrew Revkin's NY Times Dot Earth Blog post inviting scientists to answer this simple yet very important question.

We've had great feedback from our first HighWaterLine ACTION Guide and look forward to developing more of these successful socially engaged DIY public art projects in 2014, providing communities with unique tools to respond creatively to climate change and environmental degradation.

11.07.2013

Artist
Eve Mosher gave a talk as part of the Marfa Dialogues New York on October 30th,
2013, hosted by ecoartspace at the
Rauschenberg Project Space. The artist shared the story of her public art
project HighWaterLine where she marked the ten-feet-above-sea-level line along nearly 70 miles
of coastline, in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, with a
baseball line marker over the summer of 2007. Mosher recently
collaborated with ecoartspace curator Patricia Watts to develop an HighWaterLine ACTION GUIDE
so that communities anywhere can learn about her work and now mark their own
line using Mosher’sproject as inspiration. The
guide was written for educators, nonprofit organizations and individuals,
combining art and science to engage aesthetics while addressing environmental
issues. In the guide, a range of waterline marking materials and other artists' examples are
provided, as well as Mosher’s step-by-step process involved in
performing the project. This is the first in a series of ten guides that will be created by mid 2015 addressing a range of environmental issues.

During
her talk Mosher focused on the evolution of the project into the
Action Guide and her upcoming HighWaterLine projects
for Miami, Philadelphia and London. In these cities, community involvement and
participation are crucial components in the planning stage, which is already
underway. For these new projects she is working on a mapping website
that will collect place-based stories, and collaborations with local artists.
She elaborated about her collaborative process, the open source aspects of the
project and the exponential impacts of giving the work away. Mosher also spoke
about the performative part of the project and how initially she did not
think of it being a performance. However, in the process of engaging with the public
and in conversations with those she met in the streets while walking
and marking the line, that it did indeed become a performance work of art.

The talk at Rauschenberg Project Space took place one year and a day after
Hurricane Sandy. Though Mosher doesn't like the role of prophetess, her HighWaterLine did in fact anticipate the
flooding and storm surges in some areas of New York that went well beyond her
blue marked 100 year flood line - or what anyone thought was possible? Sometimes
being a visionary artist is not all that easy and with people's lives and well
being at stake, Mosher's upcoming HighWaterLine
projects take on a new urgency.

10.24.2013

Transmissions curated by Patricia Watts, founder of ecoartspace and west coast curator for the Marin Community Foundation in Novato, California, was inspired by her time, recently, living for one year only 500 yards away from a large cell phone tower and mobile MRI unit in Northern California. It was during this time that she realized there was something transmitting, an energy field, from these two very common modern world inventions. Not being one to worry about cell phone or computer usage, it became clear while living in this environment that something had changed, the frequency of electromagnetic activity was undeniably present.

After investigating artists who had addressed EMFs earlier in the 80s and realizing to re-construct or re-present some of the early works would not be feasible at the exhibition location, Watts searched further to see what more recent artworks were available that would either literally or conceptually represent the invisible energy fields that are being transmitted in the daily environment.

Thilde Jenson, who photographs environmentally sensitive people, was one of the main inspirations for the show. Her images capture the level of desperation many people find themselves in when they realize that they are our canary's of the high tech world.

Cathy Akers from Los Angeles explores utopian ideals of hippie communes from the 1960s. In 2012, she traveled to The Farm in Tennessee where she learned that they, the "farmies," believe boundaries between individuals do not exist, and that telepathy is real.

And, Christina Seely, who is a founding member of a design collective Civil Twilight, which created Lunar Resonant Streetlights that respond to moonlight, dimming and brightening in relationship to the cycles of the moon, documents light pollution around the world in some of our most brightly illuminated regions of the Earth.

Transmissions is comprised of one hundred and thirty artworks including paintings, photography, and sculpture by thirty artists from Berlin, New York City, Atlanta, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The exhibition will be on view through January 24, 2014 at the Marin Community Foundation in Novato at 5 Hamilton Field, #200 from 9-5pm, Monday through Friday.

9.20.2013

ecoartspace currently has an exhibition of works by 32 artists on view at The Paramount Hudson Valley in Peekskill, NY through October 6th. Many of the works included are inspired by the Pete Seeger song Where Have All the Flowers Gone? on
the occasion of his September 8, 2013 “Return to Peekskill” concert at
the Paramount in partnership with WAMC radio. The exhibition is jointly
organized by Amy Lipton of ecoartspace and Simon Draper, founder of
Habitat for Artists. To read the full blog post and view the artworks
for sale please click HERE.

8.15.2013

ecoartspace is excited to present Eve Mosher's HighWaterLine ACTION GUIDE, the first in a series of ten art and ecology learning guides presenting replicable social practice public art projects. In 2007, Mosher spent the summer marking the ten feet above sea level line throughout Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn to make visible for residents living along the coastline what scientists had been projecting as an increase in sea level in the next century. Little did she know when she conceived of this project that in 2012 Hurricane Sandy would pound the east coast with storm surges in some places beyond what anyone thought was possible.

With this guide we are inviting educators, organizations and individuals to replicate what Mosher did in New York City anywhere in the world, to tell her story and to mark a line as appropriate for each individual locale. In the guide, other waterline marking materials and examples are provided, as well as Mosher's step-by-step process involved in developing and performing the project. Plans are in place to create a website portal where this guide and others can be viewed online and downloaded for FREE by anyone in the world to use. For now we invite you to download the PDF from DropBox and distribute freely, as well as create your own HighWaterLine in your communities and neighborhoods where climate change has and will be impacting your natural environment in the future.DOWNLOAD GUIDE HERE

8.13.2013

"Abstractions are seductive and evocative and
invite contemplation and reverie. In the liminal space of an abstract work of
art, our perceptions are free flowing and transitional. We know the world is
changing and growing rapidly, with seven billion people and counting. How we
respond to these changes and cope with them can be supported by art that makes
room for our deepest cultural and personal concerns." Patricia Watts

In 2011, I began researching artists who were doing abstract paintings, mainly in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. It was my suspicion that what might be happening with this new vibrant and energetic work was a response to extreme weather events or climate change, if not explicitly, subliminally. I wasn't sure if my hunch was right, but eventually found a few artists painting fragmented landscapes that evoke our most pressing environmental issues. Of course, the outcome was a much broader representation for an exhibition titled Millennial Abstractions including 22 artists and over 90 paintings (a few sculptures) presented at the Marin Community Foundation in Hamilton Field, Novato, California (Feb. 15 - May, 31, 2013).

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Artists such as Marie Thiebault, Samantha Fields, Gina Stepaniuk, and Judith Belzer (from top to bottom, left to right, above) each have been very outspoken about how our changing climate influences their work. And, each has captured the intensity and dynamism of the flux we find ourselves in--working through who's to blame, who's responsible, and how can we hold on to what we have before it becomes indistinguishable. For example, Thiebault with her series on the devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; Fields with her blurred windshields with pounding weather events; Stepaniuk with her satellite perspective of a fragmented planet; and Belzer with her topographical lands eroding off in the distance.

Although not all of the artists in the show felt that their works were identifiably related to events of the new millenia--9/11, the Iraq War, or climate change--they are each a part of what appears to be a revival in painting that hasn't been seen since the 1980s.

7.27.2013

Expo 1:
New York, focuses on some of the most pressing environmental and sociopolitical
issues of the day. It takes the urgent and pragmatic sensibility of “Dark
Optimism” as its position. Dark Optimism addresses ecological challenges set
against the backdrop of economic turmoil and sociopolitical upheaval that has
made a dramatic impact on daily life. In response to these global challenges,
the magazine and editorial collective Triple Canopy calls for “dark optimism,”
an attitude that encompasses both the seeming end of the world and its
beginning, one that is positioned on the brink of apocalypse and the onset of unprecedented
technological transformation. Climate change has generated storms, droughts,
and floods that occur with greater frequency and severity. Economic volatility
around the world has precipitated political action, giving rise to manifestations
and uprisings in regions such as Northern Africa, the Middle East, Western
Europe, and New York’s Wall Street. Meanwhile technological innovations and
novel architectural initiatives offer the tantalizing promise of a brighter
future. Recent advancements have facilitated communication – which at times has
helped organize political protests-as well as access to information with such
ease and volume that it threatens to become overwhelming in scale. The works exhibited
in Dark Optimism make note of these paradoxical conditions and the
instabilities of both natural and artificial systems. - wall text at PS1 MoMA

I’ve made
three visits to PS1 MoMA’s exhibition Expo 1: New York, Dark Optimism, and have
tried unsuccessfully to find anything in the exhibition that reflects
the museum wall statement quoted above. As a curator who has focused on working
with ecological artists for over a decade, I went to PS1 with excitement to see
this challenge (finally) being taken on by a major New York institution for contemporary
art. The show was organized with good intentions in direct response to the effects of last year’s
Hurricane Sandy and its far-reaching impact on our local environment and
economy, on coastal communities and in New York City. Unfortunately I have to express my
disappointment. The works in the exhibition refer to the title Dark Optimism, presenting the dark, apocalyptic and catastrophic in current art trends. My co-curator of the landmark 2002 exhibition
Ecovention, Sue Spaid, aptly calls it “catastrophe art” in her review below. Sadly
missing are examples of the many important artists working today whose efforts
do offer some cautious optimism. Our environmental situation is dire to say the
least. Myriad issues conspire towards our demise - climate change; land, sea
and air pollution from the relentless extraction of fossil fuels; oil spills
and nuclear leaks; habitat destruction; species extinctions; the list goes on
and on.

In the
New York area alone there are numerous artists, established and emerging, making
profound and inspiring works that tackle these issues, but they are not
represented in this exhibition. Brandon Ballengee, Lillian Ball, Joan
Bankemper, Jackie Brookner, Betsy Damon, Michele
Brody, Wendy Brawer, Mel Chin, Elizabeth Demaray, Peter Fend, Katie Holten, Natalie
Jeremijenko, Habitat for Artists Collective, Kristin Jones, Eve Andree Laramee, Ellen Levy, Lenore Malen, Mary
Miss, Maria Michaels, Mary Mattingly, Aimee Morgana, Eve Mosher, Leila
Christine Nadir, Cary Peppermint, Aviva Rahmani, Andrea Reynosa, Christy Rupp, Jenna
Spevack, Alan Sonfist, Katrin Spiess, Tattfoo Tan, Mierle Ukeles, – to name a few. And that list doesn’t include the many artists
outside of New York, internationally, or the hundreds of painters and photographers who make work
representing and bringing awareness to environmental issues. No exhibition can
be completely inclusive – but a show on ecological challenges in New York City
has been long awaited and this is a real missed opportunity to give the topic
the seriousness and depth it deserves.

Thanks to
the daily programming of lectures, debates and discussion by Triple Canopy at
PS1 in conjunction with the exhibition - Speculations (“The Future
is____________”). A few of the artists I mentioned above, Natalie Jeremijenko,
Mary Mattingly and Mierle Ukeles along with Agnes Denes (Denes is one of two historical ecological artists included in the show, the other is Meg Webster whose 1998 PS1 commissioned installation of Pool was recreated at the invitation of Alanna Heiss) were invited to come discuss their visions for the future
and give a presentation on their works that go beyond addressing environmental
challenges to offering creative, imaginative and pragmatic approaches to the
dire problems we face. That is what I call optimism.

Expo 1:
New York “Dark Optimism” remains on view through September 2, at MoMA PS1

The curators claim that the presence of so
many simultaneous activities enables PS1 to experiment with “social practice,”
yet none of the invited artists are especially known for sparking conversations
or engaging unsuspecting spectators. Absent merry makers, “social practice” is
reduced to ever more festival spectacles and educational programs. Of the fifty
artists, filmmakers, and novelists invited to lecture and/or lead discussions
in response to Triple Canopy’s suggestion, “The future is___”, only Ruth
DeFries, Natalie Jeremijenko, Agnes Denes, Mary Mattingly, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles confront
ecological issues. This dearth of eco-personnel further devalues this festival’s
stated goals.

Opposing Dark Optimism is The Politics of
Contemplation, fifty dramatic Ansel Adams photographs from 1932 to 1968. Shot
mostly in Yosemite National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and the San Mateo
County Coast, they record nature’s fragility and majesty. One might say that Dark Optimism “surveys a landscape of wilderness and ruins, darkened by
uncertain catastrophe. Humankind is being eclipsed and new ecological systems
struggle to find a precocious balance.” However, I am quoting the New Museum’s 2008
press release for Against Nature. As a trilogy, Against Nature, September
11 (2011), and Dark Optimism launch a new genre, “catastrophe art.”

By presenting artworks focused on natural or
manmade catastrophes, Dark Optimism overlooks artists’ endeavors to prophesy
or alleviate preventable disasters. Rather than exhibit any of the novel
ecological solutions that dozens of ingenious artists working on every
continent have implemented —over the past forty years—the curators present
artworks that merely react to our planet’s terrible situation, leaving Earth’s
ill-health as yet another arena for appropriation. Colonization offers a better
description. In this context, Agnes Denes’ Wheatfield:A Confrontation, which presaged Wall
Street’s ascendancy and global food shortages,is less a testament to human potential and more a nostalgic monument
to pre-9/11 innocence.Once a clever
solution, Gordon Matta-Clark’s Fresh Air
Cart (1972) is now a sign portending doom.One leaves thinking,
“What’s bad for Earth is good for art,” as if disaster photographs now provide
artistic inspiration. Peter Buggenhout’s
three fascinating sculptures evoke mud-encrusted metal structures, while Anna
Bettbeze fabulous wall hangings hint at acid-stained or flood-ravished carpets.

Pierre
Huyghe

Zoodram 5
(after Sleeping Muse by Constantin Brancusi) 2011

Live
Marine ecosystem, sculptured shell, basalt rock and filtration system